


Neva Masquerade

by Clo042



Category: Final Fantasy, Final Fantasy XI, Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Action, Age Regression/De-Aging, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Catboys & Catgirls, F/F, Genderswap, Isekai, Martial Arts, Portal-Fantasy, Psychological, Slice of Life, Transformation, Video & Computer Games
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-26
Updated: 2020-04-09
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:07:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,736
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23334328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Clo042/pseuds/Clo042
Summary: The protagonist, Philippe, heads home after a long day at work. On the way, he learns his best friend has gotten both of them Beta keys for the latest Final Fantasy MMO -- one that apparently combines the world and features of 11 and 14!
Relationships: Aileen Nera/Naja Elynn
Kudos: 3





	1. The mundane side of the Portal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The protagonist, Philippe, heads home after a long day at work. On the way, he learns his best friend has gotten both of them Beta keys for the latest Final Fantasy MMO -- one that apparently combines the world and features of 11 and 14!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I began typing this as some kind of self-therapy, and planning to go deep in wish-fulfilment and self-indulgence, as a way to fight depression. Before I could even finish Chapter 00, I felt like I had grown so much that I could barely recognize myself in it anymore. I am still publishing this, because I hope that it may help others recognize themselves through my experiences, or at the very least, that they enjoy trying to follow the way my confusing mind works.
> 
> Thank you Trismegistus Shandy for helping with editing this chapter!

When I finally leave the office tonight, it’s close to 6:40 PM; the sky is already completely dark, the temperature is slightly below freezing. Innumerable snowflakes are slowly floating down from beyond the skyscrapers, catching beautifully the cones of light casted by the many street lamps. I always liked snowflakes as a child, and how they dance in the sky, but now that I'm an adult, I’ve started hating them. They slow down traffic, and force me to shovel my driveway. After adjusting my scarf and company-issued beanie, I start the first leg of my return trip routine, the twenty minutes walk to the bus station, the sound of the city and the crushing snow alone keeping me company.

My first destination is the nearest entrance to the underground tunnels known here as the Jungle Urbaine (That’s French for “Urban Jungle”). This allows me to avoid Montréal’s cold snow-, slush- and sleet-filled streets, trading them instead for suffocating, sweat-, crap- and urine-smelling corridors. In this season, many homeless and beggars hide here from the cold. Occasionally, small groups of police officers can be seen surrounding one of them and having loud arguments. And the next day, I recognize the same faces around, which always makes me wonder what the fuss was all about. I don’t want to meddle, though, so I just keep walking. During the rest of the year, it’s easier to avoid them by navigating the streets above. As there are only a few paths across the Jungle, I do my best not to feel too awful when I walk past them. I don’t generally give money away to strangers -- finances are pretty tight as a bachelor living on my own.

I turn at the end of a long corridor and enter the glass doors of one of the many underground shopping malls that form this chaotic network. The crowd density is thankfully sparser than during rush hour, which is a relief. Still, people are walking around in all directions, some shopping, others just using the mall to get to their destinations, like me. This isn’t a big surprise, seeing as there are multiple food courts, shops, subway stations and movie theaters all connected through this maze. As usual, I walk with my head strictly downwards, watching my feet and avoiding any eye contact. I only occasionally take quick glances to allow for micro-adjustments on my pathfinding. I pretty much pay no attention to any advertisements, stands, banners, posters and electronic billboards. Sometimes, however, I catch my gaze lingering on one of the many mannequins wearing anything from winter coats to lingerie or classy, stylish, and casual outfits in the various shops’ displays. Whenever my brain catches on and realizes what I am doing, I quickly turn my eyes away, hoping nobody’s noticed anything, and I keep walking.

As I step on a narrow escalator, I sigh in frustration. Before me, an inconsiderate stranger has decided to lazily let the snail-paced machine take them to the next floor, and there is no room to allow anyone to squeeze past. After chastising myself for not predicting this outcome and veering to the nearby stairs before the split, I use that forced downtime to reflect on an event that occurred a few days earlier... At lunchtime, a few coworkers and myself were heading to a nearby restaurant, chatting about geek stuff, work, games and TV shows. Without warning, the conversation paused, and a few moments later, the others all started commenting about some allegedly hot girl who had just walked past us. I hesitated a moment, wondering if I should turn around to find who they were talking about -- but obviously I would never do that, too afraid that people may notice me doing so, especially the girl. So I just kept walking and stayed silent, smiling awkwardly. If prompted to participate in the discussion, I’d just shake my head, hoping they’d understand to let me out of it.

As soon as I’m free from my self-inflicted time-out, I accelerate and quickly circle around the traffic-jam obstacle, twisting through narrow side corridors. The unfortunate random encounter reminds me of something that happened a few months ago... One of those friends wisely declared that when I’m walking, “Philippe doesn’t see people, he sees collision boxes.” I still think that’s a fairly accurate statement of what goes on inside my head, especially when I am in “Mission mode.” In this state, I become laser-focused on whatever is my current objective, and almost nothing in the world can distract me from it. There could be a store I like, filled with 90% off merchandise that happens to be on my wishlist a foot away from me, and I wouldn’t even register it.

The escalators and twisting tunnels eventually lead to a very wide open space -- Montreal’s Central Train Station. My destination, however, lies still further beyond, and I simply cut through to another tunnel, similar to the one I just came from. As I walk on autopilot, I find myself reflecting on the things I did at work today. Working in games, especially triple-As, isn’t always fun. Getting over two hundred people to collaborate isn’t easy. To make things worse, IT companies tend to attract difficult personality types, such as introverts, geniuses and people on the Autism spectrum.

I should know, as I was recently officially diagnosed as “Twice Exceptional” (a term for people with unique abilities/gifts, and unique disabilities/needs). In my case, it translates to high-functioning Autism along with Giftedness, which used to be known pretty much as Asperger’s. On top of that, I’m also an introvert with schizoid-like tendencies. Despite all these, I’ve miraculously managed to find myself a position as Technological Director, which means that I’m the lead of a team of ten experts. Together, we support about sixty content creators spread across five different departments.

As is usual for Little Friday, I got very little actual work done. Instead I spent most of it answering questions and running around trying to extinguish metaphorical fires, running dangerously late to the many meetings that keep appearing on my calendar throughout the week and day. Once again, I totally skipped lunch and spent the hour working at my desk, the only time where I managed to stay in front of my computer monitor uninterrupted. Later in the afternoon, when an all-too-familiar headache signaled me how hungry I was, it was so close to the time to head home and eat supper that I grabbed and snacked on a Pumpkin-N-Spice breakfast bar from the box I keep at work for such emergencies.

As it happens rather often, the thirty-minute break I had scheduled in the afternoon to get some much-needed sunlight and Vitamin D was double-booked by a product coordinator. Ever since I added this recurring event in my schedule at the recommendation of my dietitian, I have never been able to actually make use of it. Every single day, I see its reminder window pop and I end up having to ignore it, instantly wracked by guilt for not taking better care of myself. Not quite enough guilt to actually do something about it -- just enough to stack on the self-hatred. That’s not too different from people who keep paying their monthly fee for the gym, and the guilt they feel about cancelling the subscription.

When I finally arrive at my bus station, Terminus Centre-Ville (Translation: “Downtown Terminal”), my bus is already backing away, just as I reach the threshold of gate fifteen. I stop in front and stare through the closed automated glass doors at the driver, who obviously notices me. I let out a long sigh of defeat. I don’t blame them, but I do wish that people would sometimes be nicer. I’m sure it’s against some rules or security protocol -- the terminal, the bus company, insurance? -- to stop and let me board. But at this hour, seeing as it’s the only bus presently in the garage, it would be totally safe. Can’t let a random act of kindness mess with their schedule this way, especially on a snowy day like today. Isn’t it funny how when you arrive on time at the bus stop, you end up waiting fifteen minutes because they’re running late? But if dare you show up a bit late -- oh, then the bus leaves as soon as the seconds hit double zeroes, thank you very much.

Finally done backing away, the bus driver changes gears and slowly accelerates away. The vehicle starts its escape route, running slalom between concrete pillars, and finally disappearing, turning into an adjoining street. The garage now completely dark, the glass door in front of me starts acting as some kind of mirror, and after catching my reflection, I turn away like a coward, and start looking for the bus schedule.

The monitor above me indicates that the next bus on Circuit 321 is going to be here in forty minutes. I try to review if I left a few minutes later than usual, walked slower than usual, or if this was caused by the escalator-incident, but really, it doesn’t change the fact I have to add an extra forty minutes to today’s commute, which means I’ll be home in about an hour and twenty minutes -- so around 8:20pm. By the time I’m done with supper, dishes, and taking care of my cat, it’ll be close to 9:00pm. It’s Thursday and I have work tomorrow. I suppose for normal people, that means they would start their routine to get ready to head to bed. In my case, my lifelong friend Insomnia-chan probably has other plans for me. And because we know each other so well, I tend to plan around her whims. What I mean here is that ever since I was a kid, the only surefire way for me to manage to fall asleep has been to go to bed only after I am drop-dead tired. Therefore, there will be a lot of gaming later tonight!

I pull out my cell from my jeans pocket and swiftly enter my passcode. After swiping through the recent apps to find Google Hangout, I start typing a message to my long-distance friend Chris, “Pyon~? What’s the Ry up to? Just missed the bus, so I won’t be home for quite a while still.” I lock the screen and stow the phone in my coat pocket, for easier access once I feel the phone’s rumble. “Ry”, “Ryt” and/or “The Rytheas” are some of the variations I usually call him, instead of his real name. They’re all based on one of the names he commonly uses in the games we play online together -- MMORPGs, or Coop RPGs, mostly. When talking over Discord with guildmates or guest players, we instinctively chose to use the name of our characters. That way when new players join us, they don’t have to learn what’s the player name behind each character’s name, or vice versa. And I guess we got so used to it, even outside of the game, we just kept using them.

After a short while, the silent buzzing brings a smile to my face. I check my messages, and discover, as I expected, a rather classic Ry-answer to my current situation: “Oh noes! Rescue cheering cat, then!” Attached with the message is a rather cute picture of lion-girl Atalanta from the Nasuverse (Fate/Apocrypha, specifically). In this picture, she is dressed in a cheerleader outfit, and her facial expression indicates she is not too fond of it, either. “That’s, hmm… Quite the revealing top, she got there, no?” I reply. While I appreciate the “cheering cat”, and grin stupidly at the phone, I can’t help but imagine the feelings of the characters in shots like this. I instantly see the blinking icon noticing me that Ry is about to answer something. The message takes a bit to come, which means it probably will contain another picture, if I am guessing right. “Oh? Does the Cloes prefers this one then?” This time, the attached image is Atalanta-Alter, which is an alternate version of the same historical figure. In case you were wondering, “Clo”, “Cloe”, “The Cloes” are the names that Rythea uses to refer to me, for the reasons I explained above.

Atalanta-Alter, the “berserker” wears an outfit that is usually not much more than black and purple fur covering her arms and legs. A dismembered boar head serves as “armor”, a simple shoulder pad. And the rest is simply some simple white underwear. While it creates a striking visual that I approve of (and promptly save on my Cell Phone, along with the earlier Cheerleader), I do feel a bit shy for her at such shameless display of her body. “That’s pretty badass, but also a bit revealing! Poor girl is fighting monsters in a bra, pretty much.” I know, however, that this isn’t something that really bothers him, as he had dressed his tall amazonian lady tank in a bikini often enough when running dungeons together.

“BTW, did the Cloe hears? There’s a new FF MMO coming out?”

I do a triple-take, and reread the message, puzzled. FinalFantasy XIV isn’t very old yet, and I haven’t heard any news about a new expansion, let alone a new MMO title to compete with it.

“Huh? How, and when? I should have heard of this…”

My cell phone email alarm goes off and I check the pop-up notification: “From Chris, Subject: FW: Welcome to Final Fantasy 14pointXI.” FF 14.11? What does that even mean? I mean, it’s not quite “Dissidia Duodecim” level of confusing, but it’s close to “Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days.”

“I got two keys for the closed beta. It’s all very hush hush, it seems. I figured the Cloes would be happy to give it a shot tonight.”

Chris has always been following beta invites, the reddits and all sorts of news websites. I don’t really spend much time doing that, especially when work is getting overwhelming. And hell, it’s been a rough ride these last two years for me.

“Hell yeah! Do you know anything about it? I guess there’s no Wikipedia yet, since it’s all probably under NDA.”

“I only know what’s in the email, and the title of the project. We’ll just have to figure it out as we go!”

“Cool! Do you have any idea what you’ll want to play? A Rythea-style tank, or maybe more a return to Kaestra and all her fire explosions?”

“I don’t know. What will the Cloe do?”

“If there’s a monk class, that for sure. Especially if they’re kinda tanky. And crafting, of course. Crafting ALL THE THINGS. But mostly pretty clothes for you and I.”

The forty minute wait and twenty minute ride feel almost instantaneous, as me and Chris keep talking and trying to figure out where we’ll start, what races to pick, which job we’ll play. Obviously, that isn’t very easy when we don’t even know what the options are. But we manage to nail a few things: Ry is going to be a tall, tanned redhead again (and probably go by that name again, since his names are often based on specific visuals). He’ll consider anything fire-based or spear-related. I’ll pick whatever is closest to a catgirl or elf I can find, and use fist weapons / martial-arts / monk class. We also agreed that if there’s a nation that starts in snowy areas, we would pick that one, because we are both proud Canadians, and snow is pretty. Our guild usually goes by the name “A Mari Usque Ad Mare,” taken from our country’s motto (From sea to sea).

“Is the Cloes still going to be a Cloe?”

“I don’t know, I think I want to try something else. She got a good run for the last, what, four years? I was thinking of something different like ‘Neva’.”

That name came up randomly in my head just now. It’s based on the Neva river in northwestern Russia flowing from Lake Ladoga. My cat is a nice tabby Siberian, but the Siberians are mostly known for the Neva Masquerade coloring -- snow white hair and bright blue eyes. They often have darker hair around their eyes and feet, giving the impression they are wearing a mask like at a masquerade. If there’s a way to pull off a fluffy cat girl with their striking blue eyes and white hair, I’m going to pick that name. Otherwise, Cloe usually uses whatever cute short black hair that is kinda tomboyish, and I’m fairly sure that would be a safe backup plan.

Once the bus arrives in my suburb, I text one quick message to Ry, putting our conversation on hold. I’m pretty much jumping for joy, skipping all the way to my car in the parking lot. I still have twenty minutes of driving to get back to my place, the last leg of the journey home. My plan is to start downloading the client as soon as I get in, and then I’ll take care of supper and Rune. Hopefully they have a lightweight version of the client where users can start character-generation before all the rest of data is downloaded!

“Oh man, this is going to be so awesome,” I repeat to myself aloud as I make my way to where my car is parked, almost skipping the entire way.


	2. At the threshold of the Portal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Our protagonist creates his account, installs the software and spends the time downloading the client eating, chatting and playing other games...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From this point onward, we are starting to enter the fascinating world of fiction. I have no real experience writing, so this will likely be a fun and confusing trip as I discover my style. I hope this'll be as entertaining to you as it will be to me. Also, I’m a game designer, world builder, and frequent D&D Game Master, so I may sometimes get lost talking about technical terms. Please provide feedback so that I can improve!  
> Thank you Trismegistus Shandy for helping with editing this chapter!

I turn into my driveway after an uneventful drive home. As usual when it’s cold, the remote control for my garage door is being unresponsive. I discovered a year ago, during the coldest days of winter, that I can easily fix that by pumping up the heat and placing the remote closer to the heat vents for a minute. The battery must be getting weak, but temperature has a pretty significant impact on their performance. (Bonus points -- electric cars are actually very sensitive to both high and low temperature. Batteries perform their best in a specific temperature range.) Once the remote manages to open my garage door, I carefully park inside, and cut the engine. Having an indoor garage is so amazing. Cleaning the driveway is much easier without having to play musical chairs with your car, and not having to get rid of that foot of snow before you can take off in the morning is a huge time saver!

About five seconds after I enter the house through the door from the garage, I hear a little happy chirp and a series of light footsteps. Rune, my Siberian tabby, is pretty much rushing to the front door to greet me. As I put my coat and boots off in the wardrobe, he’s very loudly sharpening his claws on the entry mat, which is pretty much his routine when I come home. I drop my GunGale Online messenger bag on the floor and slip into my warm but boring-looking loafers. “How’s my baby? You missed me, didn’t you, Ru-kitten?” Like most Siberians, he is a very vocal cat and answers me with a series of chirps and inquisitive meows. I know he must be bored when I’m at work.

I bend my knees down and signal him to come over. I pick him up as soon as he gets close enough. I think he must be around 4kg at this point (nine pounds). When I had just gotten him, he really didn’t like being picked up, but over the last six months, he’s grown more and more accustomed to it. I stand and start carrying him towards the kitchen, cradling him on his back, like a baby, which he doesn’t seem to mind too much. The cutest thing, however, is when I approach one hand close to his body, he’ll immediately latch on it with both front paws and hold to me. Like he just did now, dawwww~. I’m sure this is actually a reflex due to his breed being tree-climbers. Since he’s currently upside down, as if he’s in the middle of falling, he’s most likely just trying to hang on to a branch to prevent the fall. Regardless of the reason, it’s way too adorable for me to stop carrying him like that.

I pet him beneath the chin and wipe the little dried up tears around his eyes. He is always so cooperative when I take care of him, which makes me feel so good. Cat in hand, I make my way past the kitchen into the combination dining-living room. First order of business is to start that download! I sit in my computer chair and free my right arm from Rune's adorables clutches, extracting a small meow of dissatisfaction. My gaming PC is still fairly new, I upgraded it less than a year ago, and the specs and parts were all hand-picked to make a system that suits my precise needs. 

The best parts of my new system are how fast it boots, and how silent it runs. I flip the switch and within seconds, I am greeted by my familiar login screen wallpaper. The reflection of a cute anime girl with long straight brown hair, reaching to a glass window in front of her, staring straight at it. Or me, as it is. This kind of image evokes those rooms with mirror walls, reflections showing reflections like fractals to infinity. As I hit the still-yet-to-be-truly-discovered [Any Key], the wallpaper blurs itself out, bringing up the user login interface. I hastily enter my password, and the cute black, purple and blue desktop wallpaper replaces my lockscreen.

Ry forwarded me one of his two beta keys earlier. I immediately open my email client and ignore my usual ritual -- I can check the “El Goonish Shives” updates later. The unread email “FW: Welcome to Final Fantasy 14pointXI.” sits at the top of my screen in bold letters. Slightly trembling in excitement, I open and read the email.

“Greetings from everyone at Square Enix,  
We would like to welcome you to the Closed Beta Invite of Final Fantasy 14pointXI!  
Please use the following [LINK] to register.  
You can find the client download on the same page after you finish filling the forms and sign the required Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA), End-User License Agreement (EULA) and Tester Personality Survey (TPS).  
We are looking forward to hearing your comments, feedback and tales of your adventures in the world of Vadæl’n!  
The FF 14pointXI team.”

NDA, EULA, and nonsensical project naming conventions. So far, it all looks very legit Square Enix. I click the only link in the email, which takes me to a new registration system, called “Neovie”. Sigh. They have one for the Square Enix store, then the Square Members and points system, one for PlayOnline, the service they use for FinalFantasy XI, and finally “Mogstation,, which they use for Final Fantasy XIV. It’s no surprise that they created a totally new one for this project, but it seems like such a wasted effort. Well, I can give them points for being consistent in their inefficiency. 

The name makes some sense to me -- Latin and French for “New” and “Life”, respectively. For an MMORPG, I can see the reasoning behind the name. But for the rest of the world, I struggle how they’ll remember to type something like “www.neovie.com” to add a month of playtime on their account. Oh wells, barrier of entry and user-friendliness aside, if the game is good, I usually don’t care about the hoops I have to jump through first. But I can already hear some of my RL friends whining to me about it. Whenever I hear them complaining about these things, it always feels like they just need an excuse to stop playing MMOs with me. Whatever, I mostly play these games with nerds and weebs like me, not college or work buddies.

Yadda yadda, mouse-wheel scroll all the way to the bottom of EULA. Repeat for NDA. Repeat for yet another EULA that’s somehow different from the first one. Is this one for the server, the game, the service, the company? I’m not even skimming them, let alone reading them. Does anyone actually DO that -- read them? I mean, I don’t think there are nearly that many clauses on a contract to buy a car, and this is simply to play an online game! 

I finally reach the forms where I can put my name and information, and fill out the details on the specs of my computer. I fill both of those, and hit the “Next” button. Come on, show me that download button, will you? Oh, yet more things to fill out. A survey? This looks eerily like a personality test. Actually, I’m fairly sure this is a combination of an MBTI and Bartle Test. Given that I’m super interested in the psychology of gamers, I am very familiar with those questions. I have a pretty good understanding of the kind of results I will get if I answer their questions truthfully. I should be an ISTP - Introverted, ObServant, Thinking, Prospective.

People of the same MBTI type as me are known as “Virtuoso” (I’m part of the Assertive subgenre, as opposed to the Turbulent one) -- and for people who follow Game of Thrones, a good example is Arya Stark. As for the Bartle Test, I’m an ESAK, meaning Explorer first, then Socialiser, Achiever, with very little Killer. I usually mostly visit the “theorycrafting” side of the Explorer profile, rather than the “must visit every nook and cranny” definition. And my anti-conformist personality trait totally reflects in that score. 

I’m actually pretty surprised that they’re asking Beta Testers to answer such a lengthy survey, which is still not over after two hundred questions Being able to know if your product satisfies the needs of all four Bartle Types, and of all sixteen MBTI types is a good way to have a wide reach, so I applaud Square for such a thorough job with it. I just hope the rest of the testers will take the time needed to fill in the survey, because wow, this is still rather time consuming. I have to let Rune free after the second page, because he’s getting restless. Ry pokes me a number of times on Hangout, letting me know that he has to run out for groceries before supper. So I’m probably not significantly behind him on the process of registering/installing the client yet.

“Thank you for taking the time necessary to fill out this survey. This will be very helpful to understand where your feedback is coming from. As a reward for your efforts, we have granted your account the [DedicatedFan] tag, conferring special bonuses on your account! We hope you enjoy your time in Vadæl’n, Clo!” Oh? They even customize their thank you message to the account name? That’s a fairly personal and cute touch. I wonder what kind of special bonus it is. I assume an XP boost for the first ten levels or something like that. That’s the kind of bonuses we got for being Alpha-players in XIV, if memory serves. 

I raise an eyebrow at the message. Wait, if they give an incentive for completing the survey, was there a skip button? I didn’t see one? Or maybe it was actually a “remind me later”, or “complete survey at a later time” button? I don’t quite remember, but now that I think about it, there was a rather colourful button at the bottom of every page. I guess my brain is so wired to ignore bright and garish-looking UI elements thanks to ever-present ads that I must have dismissed it without even thinking about it. I hate when web pages try to attract my attention to a button, and I only realize after fifteen minutes of searching that they have made their link/button TOO obvious, and it gets filtered out instead. Damn you, Brain-of-mine, for being too good at what you do!

Oh, lookie here. A huge and gaudy “Download Client Here” icon in the center of the screen. I must say that when the whole webpage is empty and white, then it’s okay to make a “cute” button. A simple URL would have done the trick, but sure, I can click your fancy, candy-colored link instead. The download begins at last, and it looks like this must be for the “minimum playable” build, since it’s only going to take an hour or so. I stand up and type a quick Hangout message to Ry:

“Pyoron~? Download just started, ETA 1 hour before CharGen can begin. Time to fix supper, and probably play some PuyoTetris, unless you’re home and want to poke a Namielle or two while it’s downloading?”

“Oh? What took the Cloe so long to start the download?”

“I apparently didn’t realize you could skip their survey… But they did say they rewarded me with some special perk in exchange. Did the Rythea fill it all?”

“Nah, I skipped it as soon as I could. Download finished, and I started messing with the character creator until I left for errands. Should be done soon.”

“Alrighty, I’ll poke you as soon as it’s installed, and you can poke me when you’re home, in case we want to hunt things in Monster Hunter then.”

“Sure.”

Supper is going to be a simple affair. I am so used to getting home this late, I just open the freezer, and randomly take out one of the frozen pre-cooked meals I get at the grocery store. Looks like today it’s teriyaki pork. That’s good, because it’s one of my favourites, and they’re often sold out. It’s always a struggle to restock enough of them. Close freezer. Remove the cardboard wrapping. Nuke for four and a half minutes in the microwave. While I’m waiting, I look around for something tasty to munch on. Fake Oreo cookies? Sure, I can probably okay a small handful of cookies for today. I turn around, grab the nearly empty kettle and start filling it with water. I grab a tiny spoon, fork and my “Fairy Tail” cup from the cupboard. I drop a heaped spoonful of Nescafé Instant coffee in the cup, and wait for the food and kettle to heat. As I wait, I take one of my cookies and start nibbling on it. I never understood why people care so much if you eat the sweet things before, during or after the meal. Live and let live, and stop getting bothered by the small stuff.

*Sh-tock!* The electric glass keetle’s techno-futuristic blue light turns off as the water reaches boiling temperature. As I could have predicted, it won the race against the microwave. If only I was a betting man. Pour water, add milk. Quickly get the cup out of the way of the cat. Because, as usual, he's trying to come by to smell it and promptly start burying it. Or at least try to. “I know you don’t like the smell of coffee, Rune, but it’s the same as yesterday, and I won’t stop tomorrow, so better get used to it.” I know most people hate instant coffee, but the price is right, and that’s the smell I grew up on -- my parents only drank that stuff, and that’s what coffee IS for me. Those four-to-six dollar double latté grandé di caprachinno tri fromagi or whatever they sell these days do nothing for me. Plus, the point of drinking coffee has never been the taste. It dampens my caffeine withdrawal headaches and helps with concentration. Also, I’m not sure it does anything to keep me awake, honestly. (Insomnia has that job, and it’s a jealous mistress.)

I finish my first cookie, and take a sip of coffee. The microwave is indicating that my meal will be ready in less than a minute, so I fill a bottle of water from the tap and start to set my placemat and tableware for the incoming supper. “Lunch” for me usually means eating out at restaurants. Most often, my focus is on the speed of service and price, cheaper being the preference. Supper is often those frozen meals, and breakfast is almost always the same combo of quinoa and cereals. I know some people like to have fun cooking or eating, but I have always seen it as some kind of upkeep you need to pay. And ideally not spend too much time before and after, cleaning dishes and cooking implements. I do enjoy cooking when I have people over, and I think I’m better at making desserts than meals. But when it comes to feeding myself? Meh. Toss things together, eat, get the proteins, nutrients, vitamins required to survive. That should be enough. 

*Beep~ Beep~ Beep~* Well, well. It is time to eat that rather tasty, but pretty unexciting meal. Three times before I’m done, I have to take Rune from the table and put him down on the floor. I wonder if he’ll actually respect the fact this is “my space” someday, or if that is going to be a dance we’ll practice for the next twenty years. I am mentally preparing myself for the latter. Thankfully, after three repetitions, he usually gets the memo. I finish eating and rinse everything before sorting the recycling, trash and tableware in the proper place. 

There’s still at least fifty minutes before the “lightweight” download is over, so I go to the living room area and let myself fall into my very comfortable gaming chair. Do I feel like getting wrecked at Tetris, or should me and Ry get at least some progress in our weekly hunts? I check my phone to see if he’s back already as I turn on the PS4 and begin loading Monster Hunter almost reflexively. While it’s loading, I start typing a message to Ry: “I just popped on MHW, join me when you’re home, and we can kill things until 14.11 is done downloading.” According to his last message, I have half-an-hour of time to kill by myself. A hunt or two later, Ry joins me in-game and in “party chat”, and we team up to kill some nastier enemies. We have played this and other games together so much, we mostly chat about work, animes. Today in particular, though, we talk mostly about how excited we both are to discover this new world, and poke the character creator. As soon as I notice the download hitting 100% on my computer monitor in my peripheral vision, I let Ry know.

“Hey. It’s done. Let’s finish this quickly and swap to the PC.”

“Kay~kay.”

That poor dragon. It never had a chance. We were just messing around until suddenly the two hunters got SERIOUS. Ry’s character in most games can be summed by “What is survival, but a miserable pile of secrets?” If his characters can do more damage, more crits and BIG NUMBER SYNDROME (ideally through some form of EXPLOSION of Megumin of KonoSuba fame-proportions...), then Ry is a happy camper. A pretty good complement to my builds that are often focused on surviving forever. In MHW’s case, you can’t really build “tanky”, so here I focus on making enemies unable to strike back.

Within minutes, the hunt is over. The rewards distributed, the game saved, Playstations turned off and musical chairs played. I’m now back in front of my PC, joining our guild's Discord voice-over channel, just in time to see Ry’s icon show up in the list. “Nya~!” I say, testing the voice activation as I adjust my micro and headset. Ry simply replies with a simple “Hello~.” I double-click the downloaded file, and go through the usual Setup.exe windows any PC-user should be familiar with. Yes yes, I have read the terms already; I still approve of them. Yes, I clicked this file because I wanted to install the game client, not abort the process. Next. Next. Next.

“Alright, install is in progress. Discord says you’re already loaded up?”

“Yeah, looking at the many races at the moment.”

“How many are there?” I ask, filled with curiosity.

“Too many!”

“You tease!”

“You’ll see!”

I grumble loudly, and am surprised by Rune walking over my keyboard and scratching my mouse pointer on my monitor. I grab him to prevent any damage and start petting him, rubbing my nose against his… And… there he goes, he’s licking my nose now. That’s ticklish as all hell. And somewhat gross, cat! I start laughing.

“Stop it, stop it, Rune!”

“Rune being overly friendly?”

“Yeah, a bit too much, to be honest.”

“Good cat!”

I keep petting him and check my computer’s main monitor. Almost done! I turn my chair and release Rune over his very comfy cat-bed-nest-thing that is just beside my computer chair. 

He chirps and walks away, his super fluffy tail waving adorably behind him. As I turn my attention back to the screen, the message has changed to “Installation complete. Click Continue to launch FF14pointXI.exe.”

“It’s installed! Time to see what are those options!” I launch the game client and am rapidly shown a series of legal screens. Engine. Studio. Tools. I recognise many official logos, because they’re the big names every big studio in the industry uses. Wwise, Bink, Umbra, things like that... Nothing that really matters to me, but I guess they put it there because it does to someone.

The Amano-drawn logo (or -inspired? Does he still do those himself at 67~68 years old?) of the game shows up on screen without too much fanfare. No opening video, no illustrations or even hints of what the game will even look like yet. The music playing in the background is the classic Final Fantasy arpeggios, but there’s a subtle, unique and familiar take to it. The lack of any intro is surprising, but perhaps it’s because I’m still running the lightweight client, or because the opening comes after character creation? In any case, that means I can get to the good part more quickly! There’s a series of options, but most are greyed out -- No Data Center selection. No server selection. No Character Selection (I don’t have a single one created yet after all). The only option available has the iconic Final Fantasy “finger pointer” hovering next to it, awaiting my confirmation. Create Character. The time has finally come!


	3. A foot in both Worlds

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The MC goes through Character creation, detailing lots of the options, and some of his hesitation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter feels almost like a game design doc explained in prose. But I think that it’s important for the readers to understand the range of choice, and the things that the main character hesitates about, as well as those he cares deeply about.  
> Thank you Trismegistus Shandy for helping with editing this chapter!

I click the create character button. After a short fade to black, a new strange interface shows up. It’s actually not a simple list as I would have expected. It’s actually a big crystal flower in the shape of a rose? There are clear divisions, similar to a stained glass window, showing smaller shards, all built of a few different fixed shapes. A quick inventory shows that there’s twenty possible races, all using one of the four different shard shapes. Let’s see. The center and biggest shard is the only one shaped like a hexagon. Putting the cursor over it shows a preview picture along with text description, indicating that this is the Hyur race. From the image, they look like regular humans. I assume the size of the shard is some kind of indication of the spread of that race in the game world. We made the game, and made ourselves the prevalent race in the game. Typical, I want to say. 

The only other unique shard shape is actually sitting outside of the main rose, slightly off to the side of the screen. It has a rhomboid shape and is of a decent size compared to the others. I am curious why it’s so obviously different and split from the others. Placing my cursor over, it reveals that this is the Galka race. I remember those guys very well. They were the “big” race in Final Fantasy XI, or in the world of Vana’diel. Physically, their greenish-gray skin tone and lizard-like tail always made me wonder what they were supposed to be based on. Reptiles? They have very wide shoulders, relatively short and small legs, and long arms and big hands. They make for very impressive-looking paladins and other tanks, because their shields and weapons are super-sized when compared to the shape of their body. They’re unique in that they are an agendered species. They don’t reproduce, they reincarnate as young Galka after they die. 

Interestingly, the way their background is established means this race’s population should have never increased or decreased since their genesis. The fact their shard is one of the biggest one hints that before humanity multiplied in the last few hundred years, Galka had been the most populous (and likely, powerful) race on the world of Vadæl’n. That also means that whenever one of them is held prisoner or dies in a more permanent death due to twisted magics or curse, the race is forever weakened. It seems they are on a downward spiral that can only ultimately lead to the destruction of their entire race. That’s a weird position to take in a game where the entire player base of millions could decide to play Galka. Are those officially newborns, or are the players just taking over an existing one at that moment, in theory?

Next in size are the six big petal-shaped shards, circling around the Hyur’s hexagon. I check them one by one, and recognize them immediately. They are the main races found in Final Fantasy XIV. Miqo'te, the catgirls, Elezen, the elves of that franchise, Lalafells, the super deformed/cute characters, Vieras, the bunny girls, Roegadyn, the big characters who replaced the Galka from FFXI when they made XIV and Au Ra, the scaly dragon-based characters. Okay, so those are all very familiar to me. 

And now to check out the twelve remaining small shards. Six of those shards are found between the hexagon and the petals, and the remaining six shards are found between the petals, connecting them all together. I quickly move my cursor over them, and confirm my suspicion: Hybrid Races. People have been clamouring for the ability to make those for years! I’m glad that they have finally decided to open that floodgate, especially since they introduced hybrid characters in the main story of both XI and XIV -- Half-Elezens being the most notable ones. This immediately makes me think of all those popular Hybrids in both games. Hilda in XIV, Lilisette in XI. After all, being able to have pointy ears and not having the Elezen body shape is probably very high on many people’s wish list. The elvish races in Final Fantasy XI/XIV are not the classic D&D or Tolkien vision at all. They’re somewhat tall, long-necked, with longer than normal arms, wide shoulders, and look a bit “off” or alien. Some people may like that aesthetic, but the survey does show them with a fairly low percentage of representation compared to the cuter races.

Okay. Twenty races. I know I will stick around the cat-based quadrant, however, because of my plan to create this new fluffy white-haired catgirl. One of the three neighbouring, hybrid races is the hrothgar, a race recently added in Final Fantasy XIV, actually. Crossing a Roegadyn and Miqo'te leaves us with a pretty big, buffed and hairy lion-man or girl apparently. Pass! Neva is meant to be cute and deadly, not tall and buff. Next the half-Miqo'te, which looks pretty close to a human with slitted eyes and pointy, hairy elvish ears and no tail. I may come back to them.... And then there’s the Miqo'te/Lalafell hybrid. Moving over, they’re depicted even cuter than I expected. Little fox-people, with ridiculously fluffy tails, super-sized animal ears, and nearly super-deformed body shapes, but slightly more humanly proportioned than Lalafells. I can’t help but feel like they belong to some Korean MMO, and certainly expect to see that race taking over the top of the popularity charts.

I end up picking the Miqo’te shard for my first attempt. Let’s see what I can do with the baseline! The rest of the flower fades into stardust as the camera pans in. Oh, it’s asking me to pick a subrace. I’m familiar with three of the four. First is the seekers of the sun, who have slitted eyes, and are generally living in prides, akin to lions. A single male (the nunh) is leading and mating, and the females are the warriors, gatherers, hunters of the tribe. Their skin is usually well-tanned, as they normally live in or close to deserts. Their naming conventions are fairly patriarchal too, and includes the name of their pack’s spirit animal. “Z’lavie Imon” would actually translate to “Lavie, daughter of Imon nunh, of the Ziz clan.” 

Next are the keepers of the moon. They have human-looking eyes, but cat-like fangs. They are forest-dwellers and tend to have pale skin, and sometimes actually really odd coloring, ranging from gray-blue to almost pitch black. Keepers are matriarchal. Their first names are fairly normal, and their last name is based on their mother’s family name. Males don’t even get a proper name -- they get their mother’s exact name, stitched with an extra syllable representing their birth order. Clo was a keeper of the moon, so if she ever had a son, he would be actually called Clo’a. If she had a second one, he would be Clo’to. In her backstory, Clo had actually been adopted into an Elezen family. Therefore, her family name, Delisle (French for “of the Island”) is not a typical keeper family name.

The third subrace for Miqo’te is actually the free mithra. This is what any player of Final Fantasy XI would have played, for lack of any other option back in those days. Mithra was the only catgirl subrace in that setting, and Windurst was the city where you would normally start with them. According to the lore, all mithras found in that city were mercenaries or descendants of mithras who had left their homeland. Many of those settled in those new lands and raised their families there. Only female mithras were available to play back then, which seem to indicate that they left their country to wage war and act as mercenaries while already pregnant! According to the lore, some of them would sometimes travel back to their homeland for mating purposes, and return to their chosen countries to raise their families -- males were far too few and weren’t allowed to leave the protection and watch of the homeland special forces, the sin hunters. 

The final subrace appeals to me the most. They are called the agrarian mithra. I’m not directly familiar with that term, as they are a creation of this new project. The blurb on screen seems to indicate they are mithras that didn’t come from the Homeland, nor are they from either seekers or keepers families -- all of which have migrated to the continents where the bulk of the story takes place. Agrarians are therefore native to the current areas. Since Neva is technically inspired largely from Siberian cats, which are for all intents and purposes still wild animals, I feel that sub-race is going to be the best match for her, and I have no knowledge of their naming conventions.

I pick it and finally a character appears on screen. Already the default character model was cute, and oh my, that tail was much fluffier, and the ears were bigger than I was used to with the other sub-races. I was feeling slightly uneasy at the state of near undress of the character, but there weren’t many other ways to see what you were doing while customising your character... The second thing I noticed was that the gender option was greyed out. Similar to the old mithra rules from XI, it looks like they do not allow for male Agrarian mithra. I wonder what’s the reason for this -- they certainly have male Miqo’te models, so it must be for lore reasons.

Oh. The second option right after gender is age? They added THAT option too? I mean, it always annoyed me that characters in games were forced to be adults in body and face, especially since, like hybrid races, they kept throwing under-aged characters in the story. It’s a very anime-esque or Final Fantasy thing, after all, to have a twelve-year old swing a giant sword and defeat injustice. Clicking the option reveals that my “template” character is currently set to eighteen “human years” old. I suppose they use human years to make it easier for races like Vieras or Elves that are a bit more timeless to use a single measure for maturity. I leave it at that value for now.

Rythea interrupts my thoughts: “By the way, I found those veena Vieras, mountain-dwelling Winter Bunnies, pretty much!”

“Oh, nice. Let me know what’s their starting zone, I’ll see if I can pick the same?”

“They come from a place called Llanfair,” he answers. 

“Alright. And do I understand that means you’re going to be Viera again?” I ask, intrigued.

“Mayyyybe?” The tease! But I know that bunny girls are his favourite. Failing that, he'll be looking for bunny outfits. 

I look down below age at the third option, character height. I open the menu and see a single slider. Since the character is set to eighteen years old, and from my earlier observations, the height on screen at the moment represents the tallest she’ll be, as there was no height change by pushing the age beyond eighteen. I assume that making your character younger will set it to a fraction of that value. Miqo’te and mithra seem to range from 4’11” to 5’4”, from shortest to tallest. 

My first mithra was as tall as possible, being about as tall as the shortest male humans. My second, as short as possible. Neva is based on Siberian cats, which are fairly big, almost rivaling Maine Coons in size. So based on that, I pushed the slider to the max. 5’4” is still fairly small. More than half of the races in the game will be de facto taller than she is, simply based on race height. Next is skin color. It’s already not too bad, fairly light skinned, but being an indoors person, and lover of freckles (“A girl without freckles is like a night without stars.” --The Internets), I am okay with this. I check the various settings and take note of the default one, poking a few others to see if anything speaks to me more. I settle for a single tone darker, but it’s really hard to tell the difference.

The following option is tail, where I can change the shape and length. I spin the model around so I can take a good look at her current tail. It’s already fluffy as heck, compared to the rather bushy and short-haired ones my characters had in the past. I wonder what crazy range of options will be hidden in there. Oh wow. There are a lot more choices than I expected. You can essentially choose the length, width at the base, width at the tip, and shape of tip of the tail. From a quick exploration of the sliders, the average length matches the length of the torso, and allows for roughly tweaking about twenty percent both ways in length. The width can, at most, make the tail appear as large as the waist. I maximize the rest of the sliders. There’s no color choices or pattern selection here, so I assume it comes together with another option. The hair, likely.

Speaking of which, hair color and style is the next choice. I open the submenu, and expect the usual eight to twenty choices that I’ve become accustomed to in most MMORPGs. While they kept those easy presets, they have a ton of extra options for color highlights, length, control as well as more minor tweaks. After what feels like an eternity of messing with Neva’s hair, I look at the result with pride. She now has really long, slightly curvy white hair (and tail~) with rather discreet darker stripes. Around eye level, the stripes get noticeably darker, inspired by the masquerade coloring pattern she is named after. Final result? Cute as hell, especially with the added lynx-like ears and fluffy tail.

The following menus are much simpler fare: face structure, nose, jaw, eyebrows, mouth, lips and so on. I have a fairly good idea of what I like for all those options, so I can actually go really fast. Small cute nose, click. Average to small lips. Click that one. Thin and slightly curved eyebrows. Click. Slightly pointed chin. Cheekbones and forehead, they’re good on the default. No makeup for the lips, but a bit of shiny makeup around the eyes. Facial features and tattoos are next. “Less is more” is my motto usually when you get those choices like this. So many people go overboard and just keep stacking all those options, and they start looking like clowns. 

I start digging through the options, because I know it has to be in there somewhere. Freckles, freckles, where are you? Ah! I finally found the option, and I am completely glad to notice that they actually have more than a single pattern! And wow! Some of the patterns actually cause the freckles to cover not only the face, but down to the shoulders and arms. Some even cover the majority of the body! Well then. I pick that option, because some people in my family are very freckled (I’m not that lucky) and I have always been jealous of it. The UI expands and now there are sliders for density, and more to adjust the minimum and maximum size of individual freckles, as well as their pigmentation. I tweak the color, size and density until I get something that makes me feel fuzzily good when I look at her. That’s a lot of freckles, but it makes me so happy! I have to say, though, just who built this character creator? I can’t imagine the resources that went behind it. I think Neva will be fine with just the army-of-freckles as her distinctive thing. Her tail and mane of hair are already painting a rather distinctive long-range silhouette. 

That settled, there were only a few options left to go through -- eye shape and color is next! I already know I have a thing for Asian-styled almond-shaped eyes, so I find the closest match to my favourite. Serendipitously, I absent-mindedly start playing with the day/night cycle button, and notice that Agrarian mithras seem to have slitted eyes when there’s a lot of light, and round, human-looking eyes in darkness. That’s actually quite logical, and that means they have a better night-vision than a seeker’s, and better day-vision than a keeper’s. But logic aside, it’s a great boon! It means she’ll be able to sport the “cat” look when in the wilderness, but also look more relatable / human-like in other or more private settings. And as much as heterochromia is a common trait in white-haired cats, Siberians actually are known for the striking blue eyes. I set the eye color to azure blue, which feels to me the closest to what it should be. That’s when I notice the emissive slider beneath the color picker. Technically, eyes shouldn’t be emissive by definition of the word (that would mean they’re like flashlights, and emitting light!), but if you put in some minor amount, it makes it look like your texture is reflecting light, a cheap trick we use in games often to avoid having to calculate costly reflections.

With those settings, I spend the next few minutes slowly fiddling with the ambient light from nighttime to daytime back and forth, focusing on the effect on her eye color and eyelids, but also trying to understand the effect on her global appearance, rotating the character slightly, and having her change to a different idle stance. It’s actually quite possible that I get lost for over fifteen minutes doing so. In short, I am utterly mesmerized by the result. I do a quick inventory of the options left to visit. Muscle definition, breast size, body shape adjustments and voice. 

Checking muscle definition, I move the slider to both extremes to test, and return to something slightly more defined than the default -- I don’t actually care to see the abs and other muscles, but I do like when there’s a subtle hint of muscle mass. Body shape adjustments allow me to fine tune the thickness and length of most body parts -- legs, thighs, hands, feet, waist, torso, hips, neck, and so on. That’s a dangerous place to tweak, because it can probably lead to the Uncanny Valley really fast if you don’t understand what you’re doing. I lightly tweak the feet and hand size upwards, since Siberians paws are unusually large. I make her legs a bit thicker and longer, since that breed is known as powerful tree-climbers, and have noticeably longer rear-legs than fore-legs. I end up cutting slightly in the torso length, to compensate and keep her the same height she had before.

Voice is next. It turns out, like most other options in this crazy character generator, that they allow for presets and fine-tuning. I start by isolating three out of the presets that appeal to me the most. The contenders are all fairly average in pitch and tone, and have soft, heart-warming laughters and giggles; no malice at all in those voices. Combat, ultimately, is what allows me to narrow down to a single, perfect option. Her voice-overs during combat are very subdued, keeping it mostly to inhales and exhales, rather than an outspoken kiai. Well, that’s one other option settled then.

I suddenly notice that it’s already half past three. Shit! I quickly check Ry’s status. “I have work tomorrow, but I feel like I could spend twice as long and still have stuff I could mess with. Do you think we can rush through and at least log into the game before I fall asleep and/or unconscious?”

His answer surprises me: “Perhaps? You saw that icon for the things you can change afterwards in-game, right?” I didn’t! He continues: “There’s this small scissors-icon next to the category for anything you don’t need to spend an eternity tweaking now -- you’ll be able to change those at the aesthetician in-game.”

Damnit, brain, why do you keep doing this to me?! I sigh, looking at the buttons on screen: “Well, that’s great, but I’m almost done with all options now; I only have two options before I’m done with the physical appearance. But don’t rush. I guess I’ll poke some emotes around the spawn point and log off once I’m done.”

Right. I have skipped over it and avoided it long enough, but I should at least go through the infamous “Boob Slider”... If my observations of people’s behaviour isn’t too far off the mark, games could pretty much remove the slider entirely, and replace it with a boolean (True/False) checkbox. Because it seems like people either don’t touch it, or crank it to eleven. And honestly, in FF14, even at max value, it isn’t ridiculously sized like in other games or art forms. Layer some armor or outfit on top, and the slider’s effect starts becoming more and more subtle. The current default is set to 25% of the slider, and I rapidly settle on a comfortable spot around 33% after testing both extremes. If I’m totally honest with myself, I still do love the curves and eye candy, I just don’t want it to be at the center stage. Pondering the result, I assume that puts the new size around a 34D?

Time to revisit the age selection, then. It is currently still set to eighteen “human years,” and I therefore have a really good idea of what kind of young adult Neva will turn out to be. But I’m super curious to see what she would have looked like on the way there. Slowly removing years, I try to reverse-engineer the stages of her evolution. Seventeen and sixteen are almost the same as the previous. Very minute facial structure changes at most. Turning it down to fifteen, there is a small but visible height difference. So it seems her puberty ended sometime between fifteen and sixteen. Going down further in age, the height-delta-per-year ratio remains steady until eleven. That would mark the start of her puberty, then. And it looks like the game’s ultimate limit is at eight years old. I push it back to thirteen for now. I don’t mind the idea of young girls being badass in games and anime, but I am also not attracted to the whole gothic lolita fashion. For starters, I tend to prefer my girl characters a bit more on the high-energy, tomboyish and practical clothing side of things. 

I hesitate in front of the character model. Should I push it up to fourteen, or Keep it there? I swap back and forth between both, and repeatedly click on the random emote button, change the lighting/background and camera angle to try and figure out which of the options speaks to me the most. After all, unless they allow characters to actually get older in the game, I’m going to be staring at a teenager for a good part of the next five or so years of my life. This argument is what pushes me to finally settle on fourteen. I search through the many different emotes and have her give me a thumbs up, confirming that she approves of my decision. I notice the facial expression she takes at the end of that emote, such a confident and happy-looking grin. Her eyelids are mostly closed, and -- oh my -- her tiny cat fangs make her smile even more adorable! Be still, my melting heart. I have her repeat the emote, and close up to her face, snatching a screenshot. 

I paste and crop the screenshot in Paint and send Ry a message over Hangout: “Neva customization complete!” with the cropped image attached. At the same time I click on the “Accept character customisation” button, and move to the next step of Character Creation. I hear the alert on Ry’s phone through Discord and he answers quickly: “Awww, she’s adorable!” 

I imitate those overly excited Japanese anime younger characters and gush out a simple “Deshō?”. (Rough translation: "Isn't she?!")

The game prompts me for non-physical details. Name? “Neva Masquerade.” Birthday? I translate the equivalent of February 23rd to their in-world jargon -- 23th sun of the 1st Umbral Moon. Place of Birth. “The Republic of Bastok.” Bastok (colloquially known as “Lastok” because it was often the weakest nation in FF11) has always been my favourite nation in that game. Even though it’s a place filled with racism, exploiting the Galka as not much more than slave labour. The segregation by wealth is very obvious. The town is led by corrupt rich politicians, and even the Governor cannot act without consulting his ministers first. When you finish the story-arc of that nation-state, you realize that it’s not all dark and oppression. It is, at the end, the city that is the most welcoming to adventurers and people looking to start new businesses. It is a city of opportunity, and it will test the value of your ambitions and character. It is also a city that empowers heroes, adventurers and risk takers.

Unexpectedly, the Place of Birth seems to alter the clothes that you start with. I make sure to roll the mouse over each of the nations, to see if Bastok will stay my choice. The Elvaan kingdom of San d’Oria makes you start with what looks like a mix of noble’s and musketeer’s clothes, in red, black and gold. I know a lot of people who will go nuts for that starter gear! The Federation of Windurst provides a very fine-looking academic gown, in greens and yellows, complete with optional black hoodie that can cover one eye. Loss of the mundane sight in exchange for the ability to perceive magic is a rather common trope, and a cool-looking accent. I wonder if Odin realized he’d set such a long-lasting trend, all those years ago. I’m expecting that piece of equipment will stay undoubtedly popular for all black mage fans. 

I skip quickly over the lesser nations, only stopping when I find ones that stand out. Kazham, a jungle island nation, has some pretty sexy and minimalist tribal wear -- just a bit more clothing than a bikini. The forest nation of Gridania has this very natural theme. Feathers and leathers. But mostly, their iconic wooden mask. Gridania is a nation in the dead center of an enchanted forest protected by powerful elemental spirits. The outfits they wear are designed to protect them from accidentally attracting the wrath of those spirits, and are made with the utmost respect to the creatures and plants they had to kill or carve to fashion them. It’s a very interesting backstory, that sadly, nobody but the NPCs from that nation really have to deal with. The Thalassocracy of Limsa Lominsa, the Pirate Nation, also features a pretty cute outfit. A pair of kecks, a cloth skull cap and open linen shirt, it is the very image of the classic deck swabber, and on a catgirl, I find that outfit so darn sexy. The kind of thing to wear on Halloween. I’ll have to remember that.

Bastok’s outfit, in contrast to all the above, is very functional and minimalist. It reminds me of Nessa, the water gym leader’s outfit in Pokemon Sword. Almost skin-tight shorts and shirt, small shoes, fingerless gloves. The outfit follows the nation’s primary colors, aquamarine, black, gold and white. Since the area surrounding the city of Bastok is mostly barren ground, most people work in the mines or on boats. It looks like the outfit they start with is meant to be practical clothes that are suitable for either profession -- not likely to get torn or stuck on sharp rocks, and easy to swim with. So yeah, it’s probably essentially some sturdy swimwear.

Alright, next option. Your guardian deity? Well, that’s easy; ever since EverQuest taught me about Erollisi Marr, goddess of Love, I have been looking for her equivalent in all games. And looking at the twelve names, they’re simply the same ones I know from FFXIV. That means Menphina is the one I’m picking. Goddess of the Twin Moons and love, governing over the aspect of Ice. She shares her rule of Ice together with Halone, the Goddess of War. When it comes to picking the starting class, I don’t hesitate one second and pick the third job from the top -- Monk. Neva’s outfit gets upgraded with some extra light armor -- greaves, shoulder and elbow guards. In her hands, she’s now holding a pair of weapons that reminds me of Katars, except they have multiple blades. Three-pronged Jamadhars, maybe? That’s certainly the name that comes to mind. Her torso, hips and face are still as unarmored as before, but that’s the aesthetic of Final Fantasy Monks. Punch things! Defense? Lots of Hit Points, and counter-attacks to punch things harder after they hurt you.

The game then prompts me to add a bunch of [Tags] to my character. That’s a neat idea, I suppose. [DedicatedFan] was already selected and greyed out. Looks like I can’t remove that one. Let’s see. [Roleplayer], sure. [Immersive RP], that also sounds nice. I wonder what the difference is supposed to be between those two. I make sure to stay away from [eRP] and [mRP] (erotic and mature RP). [Solo-Artist], hell yeah. [Perma Party], albeit mostly only with Rythea, but still. [Trailblazer], that also works. [Adventurer], [Crafter], [Gatherer]. I finish by adding a few funnier ones: [Please say hello] [I don’t bite] [I’m a bit shy...] [Let’s have fun!] [Let’s do our best!] [Nice to meet you!]

“Please choose your Starting Location,” the game prompts me after I confirm my class. That’s another unexpected change. In XI your nationality determined it, and in XIV, your class did. I check the world map, and have to try to unlearn some of my prior knowledge of geography. Combining both worlds in the same one seems to have moved things around a bit more than I was expecting. I focus on the northern territories, however, since Ry and I had agreed to start in Snow-filled areas. It doesn’t take very long before I recognize the name of some regions, and find the Viera village of Llanfair, where we agreed to start.

Most of the interface fades to black, leaving Neva in the center of the screen in a dark, starless sky. A spinning circle appears at the bottom of the screen. “Download 27% complete.” “Downloading Pso’Xja location data.” Huh? Pso’Xja? That’s the name of a dungeon in the northlands, but in Fauregandi, the neighbouring region, if I remember. Perhaps that’s where the intro cutscene for Llanfair-characters starts?

"Well, Ry, it looks like I’m still downloading a lot of data before I can pop online -- only 27% in. So I might as well get some sleep before work tomorrow.”  
He answers with a bit of an audible sulk: “Awww. Alright, we’ll probably test emotes and stuff tomorrow after work, then?”

We wish each other “Goodnight!” before I kill the Discord connection, turn off my monitors, and slowly make my way to bed, upstairs.

I have to get up in about two and a half hours. I don’t think I’m going to be able to get a wink of sleep with how excited I am about playing this. But I suppose I can at least try to get some rest. I don’t even bother turning the lights on as I climb the stairs and enter my bedroom. Rune shoots past me, as usual, and jumps on the bed. I drop all my clothes in the dirty clothes basket, and slip on my PJ bottoms. Of course, with my computer monitors turned off and on the first floor away, there was no chance I could notice the status update as the download progressed slightly further.

“Location Data Download Complete.” “Unique condition triggered. [Immersive RP] with [DedicatedFan]. You are about to be transported to Pso’Xja and experience a journey in Vadæl’n like none other before. We hope you have a wonderful experience as Neva!”


End file.
